Cedar Fair launches new websites

With regard to Ticketmaster and Live Nation, the issue with most people isn't whether or not the ticketing agency should be making money, it's an issue of their quasi-monopoly position to charge whatever they want. Historically, the only way to get around the fees is to buy at the venue, which is rarely practical for something that is popular or in demand (or in another city).

Lord Gonchar said:
I really wish we had someone who posted here who knew for sure what the deal behind these fees were. Is it a money grab or a legitimate cost-covering measure?

Besides the obvious operational costs for the company providing the e-ticketing services (Accesso in the case of Cedar Fair), they, rather than the park, pick up the tab for fraudulent credit card orders. Consider this: Tickets can be printed and used within hours, long before the actual credit card owner realizes what is going on. Plenty of time to get into the park before the tickets can be invalidated.

Lord Gonchar said:

Brian Noble said:
First, I can't believe you used the term "money grab." It seems very un-Gonch-like to suggest that a for-profit business working to increase profit is somehow bad.

I don't believe "money grab" has negative connotations. I meant it as a matter-of-fact term. It is what it is.

I'm like a kid in a candy store reading that exchange...it is wayyy funny for me.

Gonch - I can easily believe that you don't think the term "money grab" has negative connotations. For almost everyone else out there, it does. One of the things I like about you is that you are able to use a term like that *sans connotation*. But honestly, if someone were reading your stuff for the first tme and had no background read that, they very well might infer that you intended to use the "loaded" version of the term. I'm happy that I know you well enough to be able to smile at the possibility of an implication-inference mishap.

Words are fun... :)

I gotta be me. :)

I dunno. To me the idea of a 'money grab' is taking the easy cash.

As in, "Are they covering actual costs or is it a money grab?"

Is charging an arbitrary fee because people will pay it a bad thing? I don't think so. People will pay it. No different than charging as much as people will pay for any service or product. In this case people will pay $5 for the right to purchase and print their own tickets. If that's excessive there's no reason the market shouldn't correct itself.

But still, I'm really coming around to the idea of just hiding all the unpleasantry. Exactly for the reasons discussed with GoBucks89 a page back - it's easier to take more money and leave the customer more satisfied at the same time. A case of you can have your cake and eat it too.

---

EDIT:

Maybe in hindsight I did slant it negatively - the way I contrasted "legitimate fees" at one end of the spectrum with "money grab" at the other. Maybe I even subconsciously knew that as I wrote it? I don't have a problem with it. Simply a way of drawing the spectrum with words. At one end it's a totally non-profit cost covering measure. At the other it's a unabashed attempt to milk the customer for more.

I'm not here to make the moral call. I'm curious as to where between the two extremes the truth lies.

Goes back to the power of the word "free." Which is why I can't understand why we are still being charged double-digit fees to park. Parks should roll those dings into the ticket price and call them "free."

Note something that appeared in Ouimet's slides more than once: that they would give the customer a good value at a price that he is willing to pay (but no less). There's the challenge right there. The business's job is to make me want to give them my money.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Lord Gonchar said:
Just for you :)

lol :)

I didn't have them hitting $51 until 2015

Had they continued the typical $1 or $2 increases, you may have just been right.

Sorry Gonch, but it is pejorative.

The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English (2009)
mon·ey grab
• n. inf. an undignified or unprincipled acquisition of a large sum of money with little effort.

Dignity and principles are such a subjective thing. ;)

Like I said, I may not think of it that way, but I certainly used it that way in drawing the scale of extremes.

So what's the term for a dignified and principled aquisition of a large sum of money with little effort? :)

Fine. But you don't get to redefine the meaning of English words. You're good, but you're not that good. If you didn't mean it to be pejorative, you would have done better with a different turn of phrase.

what's the term for a dignified and principled aquisition of a large sum of money with little effort?

A really good VC pitch.

I'm going to give you the same answer I gave Gator:

"Maybe in hindsight I did slant it negatively - the way I contrasted "legitimate fees" at one end of the spectrum with "money grab" at the other. Maybe I even subconsciously knew that as I wrote it? I don't have a problem with it. Simply a way of drawing the spectrum with words. At one end it's a totally non-profit cost covering measure. At the other it's a unabashed attempt to milk the customer for more."

Can I use a negative term for those purposes but still not personally feel the term/action is negative one to me. Or is that getting a little too sociopathic?

I think you are missing my point. Words mean what they mean. If you use them with some other meaning in mind, you don't automatically get the "other" meaning, and instead should assume that everyone else will use the meaning that is ordinarily associated with them.

If I were to capture what I think you are trying to say, I would have written it something like this:

"At one end it's just to recapture costs. At the other end, its just an attempt to figure out how much print-at-home is worth to the purchaser, and to monetize it."

Even the phrasing you used, "...unabashed...milk the customer..." carries a value judgement that most would interpret as negative.

Milking is only positive when it involves cows.

Ok.

I'm saying it's two different things.

1. My asking the question by drawing the boundaries of the range of possibilities in terms of the responses on the subject up to that point.

2. My personal stance on such practices.

Just because I used money grab to define the one end of the scale doesn't mean I am making a personal moral judgement. I'm defining both ends of the argument up to that point.

In fact, I think it's incredibly impartial of me. :)

"Is it a money grab or a legitimate cost-covering measure?"

Asking that question shouldn't have any bearing on my personal stance and it's certainly not meant to imply anything. Perhaps my nature is to be too colorful? Seems the best way to word it if I were trying to impart my personal stance would have been:

"Is it a pure profit opportunity or a cost-covering measure?"

But it wasn't about my personal stance, it was about the tone of the room.

In my mind, whether it was clear or not, I was separating my opinion and asking the question objectively (almost third person):

Lord Gonchar said:
I really wish we had someone who posted here who knew for sure what the deal behind these fees were. Is it a money grab or a legitimate cost-covering measure?

Honestly though, it was meant to be more contentious than it came out in that I don't believe it is a flat out attempt to profit and even if it is, so what?

I probably could have conveyed that better by qualifying the use of money grab like this:

"Is it a money grab as so many people seem to claim it is or a legitimate cost-covering measure?"

I guess the bottom line is that I didn't mean for the question to represent my personal view of the situation at all, but rather just to describe the situation. And all of the terms I used do. It is what it is.

I believe that an attempt to monetize print-at-home ticketing, a money grab, a pure profit oppurtunity, and an unabashed attempt to milk the customer are all the same situation seen through different eyes.

are all the same situation seen through different eyes.

Right. Which is why I was surprised that you chose language that had the eyes under furrowed brow and behind narrowed lids. :-)

I'm unpredictable like that.

I wanted so badly to think that Gonch was finally being crabby about greed, but I knew better. It did make the discussion interesting for a second though. :)

My problem with the website is that it seems a little sloppy. Beofre this discussion, I clicked over to view the Cedar Point site, and I couldn't get around very easily. It began to be very noticeable to me when I clicked the option to buy a season pass, and could not find the Platinum passes anywhere, just Gold. I slapped myself in the forehead when I realized that I had to click a little link at the bottom corner of the window that offered more choices. That's not how you sell upgrades. All offers, especially the more expensive offers, should all be on one page so it is easy to compare.

Tekwardo said:

And before anyone comes in with an "iOS isn't the only mobile operating system out there any mine runs flash" I say "yeah, but everyone around you didn't waste money on Android or WP7"*

*that was not a comment on the merits of either, just a comment on the fact that iOS is gaining quickly on android, and nobody buys a windows phone. On purpose any ways.

iOS is fine if you want to work exactly in the narrow realm of Apple's design and how they want you to operate the phone. Android is certainly not a waste of money, it is highly customizable and in many ways more powerful than iOS. As far as iOS gains on Android, that is just a temporary sales spike in one quarter because the updated iPhone was released. Market share is 56% Android, 28% iOS, 9% RIM and 6% Windows Phone. Give Windows Phone a chance, I hear it is pretty slick and fun to use.

As of Q4 2011, Android is at 51%, iOS is 37%. It's starting to even out a bit more, which is interesting because Apple has 3 phones to choose from, where Android runs on everything.

You also have to take into account, there are phones that may run Android, but they're kind of stripped into a semi-smart/Facebook machine. I can't remember names off hand, but Motorola and HTC have both put them out there.

I was a die hard, bleeding green like the little robot, never use an iOS device again, always flashing my ROM and overclocking my phone kind of user - until I decided that I was wasting my time hacking my phone to make it do what I wanted, when it was already there in iOS. When the 4S came out, I kicked it around for a month or so, played with it, stared at it, looked around at everything it is compatible with - and jumped to it. Couldn't be happier. Now, I've got an Apple TV, working on an iPad and a MacBook.

I want to learn Mac OSX because I think that'll really help move me along in my IT career, which seems to be stagnating in current technology.

Now, I've got an Apple TV, working on an iPad and a MacBook.

My gateway drug was a MacBook Pro, bought 2.5 years ago for my consulting business to replace a tablet PC. Within the year, my entire computing infrastructure switched from windows/linux to apple.

(Decided to punt on the whole market share thing...)

Gee, I've been using Apple machines since 1981. For my personal hardware, it's been almost exclusive, although I have a Windows 7 box on my desk at work.

And if you know a thing or two about the history of the Macintosh, that alone should be telling. :) To put it another way, I bought my first Macintosh in 2002.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.